A present from my grandmother, to accompany my new little Mac. Love it!

At this moment, we’re living in Thailand for three and a half months. During the week, we’re in Ban Amphur, in Lela’s lovely apartments by the beach. In the weekends, we try to see as much of Thailand as we can! A few pictures:

Above: Ko Samet, a lovely island on the East Coast where the Thai locals like to enjoy their weekends. Most tourists go to the West Coast.
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Ban amphur & apartment, originally uploaded by bartvanpoll.

Our temporary office in Ban Amphur Thailand for the coming months!

Glasgow university, originally uploaded by bartvanpoll.

We visited Glasgow a couple of weeks ago. It’s really a cool city for a citytrip!

Check out www.SpottedbyLocals.com/glasgow for local tips of course…

We found a nice new way to travel  while we’re not traveling, and learn a bit more about the world.

We pick a country we do not know much about, or blindly pick a country on the map. We memorize the capital and find a documentary about it online. Hopefully in a few years, we know all the capitals and countries in the world!

The first one: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso!

We found this interesting documentary by an American who did a workshop there.

I’ve been memorizing “Ouagadougou” for a week now, and won’t forget it!

Yesterday Rachèl Louise performanced in our living room at Sanne’s birthday. What an amazing concert!

Check out http://www.rachellouisemusic.nl for much better quality videos.  And book a living room concert at your place!

Last week, I was at De Balie’s “Beyond privacy” evening, where Siva Vaidhyathan was talking about his new book (to be published early 2011).

In this book, he will try to answer 3 questions:
What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google’s ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?

In his talk he very much focused on the lack of information Google gives their users, who are mostly not knowledgeable enough to make a good decision about whether or not to use Google. Interesting point!

Anyway, read Siva’s blog for more! http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/

Cardiff, Wales, originally uploaded by bartvanpoll.

Nice center of arts, bar, theater, cinema, and much more, we visited in Cardiff last week.

It’s been about a year since I last visited a Mobile Monday Amsterdam (#MoMoAms) conference, one of my favorite conferences about new technology in Amsterdam. I always leave with a few pages of ideas in my notebook, and a lot of energy. Yesterday’s theme: the process of design.

My two favorites were definitely after the break:

Timo Arnall tried (and succeeded!) to let us think about designing interfaces without a mobile phone.

Check out more of his amazing videos here

Matt Webb (Berg London) tried to predict the future after mobile by combining 4 developments he thinks are important:

• Faces make understanding – people are better at understanding faces than numbers
• Hard math for trivial things – today’s computing power is amazing.
• Fractional artificial intelligence – AI is everywhere
• Chatty interfaces – physical appliances and social networks will be connected

What’s after mobile? more mobile…

I hope MoMoAms will upload the presentations here, because I’d like to watch them again!

Catalonia is not Spain, originally uploaded by bartvanpoll.

Saw this sign on Barcelona’s streets today.

Tonight there is the Worldcup match between Spain and Germany. I have not seen a single Spanish flag, but many Catalonian ones…